


Their space

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, M/M, Making Love, Porn with Feelings, Self-Esteem Issues, set Abundance on fire, twenty headcanons in a trenchcoat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 10:59:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Melvin comes to check on Dandolo, and they have a moment to themselves.





	Their space

It is an hour when, Melvin has learned, caravans stop for the midday-afternoon sleep, because out on the plains moving isn’t possible at the height of the day. Even thinking is hardly possible.

The city, however, lives perfectly well: the walls of the canyon protect it from the heat and the glare.

Dandolo lives by the caravan time.

The balcony is empty save for the guards. Dandolo would get up for whatever problem is brought to him — but the city knows the habits of its Prince and tries to honor them. Wind rustles the coverings above and plays with chimes.

The drapes over the bedding alcove are lowered.

Melvin finds the split between them and looks inside, then steps into the alcove and fixes the drapes again. The two large mattresses (they can be set on a frame that would turn them into ottomans) comprise the whole bedding space. Dandolo takes a lot of space in his sleep. Now, he’s hugging one of the pillows, lying on his stomach. It is dark inside the alcove: the drapes are made from thick, heavy fabric that cuts off light, sounds and drafts. The blanket has moved to Dandolo’s waist.

Melvin is fascinated with Dandolo’s physique.

Abundance is obsessed with the “ideal body”, it looms from every poster, every giant painting: toned, it is fit for epic stories of the Earthian Antiquity; it is for show: look at how healthy and beautiful and perfect the people of our glorious corporation are! Sean used to joke that all those posters greatly influenced his tastes. Another message is: if you don’t look like this, you have no place here, you are a waste of resources, you have disappointed Mother Abundance, you defective scum.

Melvin knows the feeling. He is defective through being born a technomancer, though Mother, in her very much conditional grace, has permitted him to live. His face bears scars from shrapnel, his body is marred by even more scars. Like most of his kindred, he bears perpetual burn scars on his hands and arms. His torso is not the perfect triangular shape; he is just that bit too broad; his ears stick out a little. His many flaws are not immediately apparent — they are concealed by the clothes (the uniform had to be tailored), visible only when one pays attention — though his main flaw, aside from technomancy, is invisible: mental deficiency. Damaged goods.

He isn’t toned like someone who has too much free time and devotes it to cosmetic exercises. He is lean like someone who is hungry nearly all the time: he doesn’t have the raw potential of some of his kindred, doesn’t have their technomantic skills, but he surely has metabolism of a technomancer.

This is what he is: a slab of meat on broad bones with a bit of damaged skin and a spark or two in-between. Enough for a steak but perhaps not properly tender. Maybe better for a soup.

Dandolo, however, — oh, Mother Abundance would fucking _hate_ Dandolo. He’s huge — Mother Abundance would hate to waste resources to sustain this big body; no uniform would fit — no conveyor-produced clothing would fit: they simply are not designed for such size or body type (even though there are many people of this body type, perhaps not as large).

Dandolo doesn’t have the unhealthy ashen paleness of a dome-dweller — that tone that is timelessly all the rage in Abundance. That ashen tone means you don’t have to work in the fields or on the front lines; that ashen tone means you are from a big old city and not a village in the middle of nowhere. Only mutants and lowlifes are different and don’t have it. And foreigners, too, of course.

Dandolo is not, as Melvin doesn’t cease to note, built for show — although fuck, is he a sight. He is sculpted by heavy manual labor. In Abundance’s eyes, he’s akin to the head of the state — with the looks of a docker. Mother Abundance would be scandalized to find out that Dandolo does work in the Docks when needed. If Mother Abundance would notice Dandolo at all: he doesn’t fit into her dimensions. He’s built on a different scale. His arms are roped with muscle, his legs are like pillars, his back is broad enough to bear the weight of the whole city. His thighs…

And all the scars. At first Melvin was disturbed by the deliberate… highlighting. Covering scars up with tattoos — he could understand that — but who would rub pigment into the wounds so that scars would always be on display? Burns and cuts, fights, accidents and mistakes, failures — who would want to show all that instead of covering up, trying to forget?

A Noctian would.

An individual’s story is valuable in its own right. You rub the pigment in as though making a pledge to not forget, to learn from an experience. To celebrate that you are alive. The marks on the face tell your story to the city, in a public way, — the marks on the body tell your story to a more intimate circle, in a personal way. You are what you are, and you have gone through so many changes — here they are: surgeries, stretch marks, callouses. The canyon bears its story in the markings on the walls, all the way from the early days of Mars to when the canyon became a home to a people, to this day precisely — and so do you.

Dandolo has many scars: claws marks on his ribs from a fight with moles — they make him look like that giant cat from Earth; there is an acid burn from a very unfortunate encounter with a jellyfish; there is a scar from a stab wound on his left thigh, and thin cuts mostly on his arms; there are surgical scars on the right half of his back, near the spine and underneath the shoulder blade — a reminder of a sandsail crash. There are surprisingly few burns, considering certain periods of Dandolo’s life. Frances says that it’s because fire loves Dandolo.

But while Melvin understands the highlighting of scars now, and it still fascinates him, he can’t get used to… the different attitude towards nudity.

Of course, the Prince is expected to be dressed a certain way (that way is “like about everyone else”) — but nobody bats an eyelash when Dandolo takes off his tunic and undershirt for a spar, or for working in the gardens, when he rolls up the legs of his pants or pads around barefoot, or, the damned skirts, some of them ending just above the knee, others long with a slit that goes up to mid-thigh…

In Ophir, you’d rarely see anything above the wrist — unless in specific context: uncovered are the Rogues who are lazy and a waste, uncovered are prostitutes, uncovered are mutants.

No, Melvin doesn’t have aversion to nudity itself: growing up in a big family in a dormitory with communal showers, and then spending half his life in barracks and camps undid any shyness about it that might have remained. His body is a weapon, a tool — he wouldn’t be shy to see a gun, would he?

So how is Dandolo’s half-naked and smeared with dirt in the garden different from stumbling into the showers after a spar with Sean? Melvin can’t say. Perhaps it is not nudity — it is, again, an attitude towards a body as a whole. For Mother Abundance, a body is determined by its ability, its functions, fitness, adherence to standards. It must be able to run a certain distance at certain speed; it must subsist on a strict ration; it must kill. For Noctis… it is what it is, and it has value just because it exists, because it is a part of this concrete person. It aches, it is so fragile and so resilient, it ages, sometimes it can’t recover. Sometimes it is born with pains, sometimes it acquires them. It adapts to its environs, or the environs are simply adapted to it.

The pillow Dandolo is hugging, is made from undyed fabric, and his dark head is beautiful on it, braids fanned. One arm is an elegant bent at the elbow, the shape of biceps so handsome Melvin can feel how he would draw it, then the curve of the armpit with dark hair. The three dark marks over the ribs. The back moving slightly with Dandolo’s deep breaths. Like the plains. When they went out together the first time, just the two of them, Dandolo showed him how the plains breathe, how the distant mountains breathe. Subtly. Softly.

His gaze slides, inevitably, across the planes of Dandolo’s back to his left shoulder. Where a dark shape rests, as though someone touched Dandolo with an ink-stained hand. Or an oil-stained, with ink in it. Melvin’s gaze is always drawn to it. He feels as though it changes its shape slightly each time he looks at it. It is always wet, glistening. Fascinating. Calling to something inside him.

“You can touch it if you want to.” Dandolo’s voice is sleep-rough, scraping down Melvin’s spine.

He shivers.

He plants a hand on the mattress near Dandolo’s waist. The heat of Dandolo’s body is like a cushion underneath him. He bends down and licks the black mark.

The pillow rustles when Dandolo slides his arm under it further.

“What does it taste like?”

Melvin pushes himself away, thinking. He can’t tell, but it’s… spicy and salty somehow, and yet it tastes like nothing at all, an anti-taste.

He folds a leg under himself, runs the tips of his fingers down Dandolo’s back. His fingers catch on a few scars. He follows the lines to the small of Dandolo’s back, stops where the blanket is bunched up.

“Why do you ask?”

Dandolo shifts (the tattoos shift with him). “People say it tastes different for everyone.”

People? Melvin is torn from his unconcealed admiration. The air inside the alcove has a subtle aroma of spiced oranges.

“Melvin? I am not the only one with the mark. In general. Everyone gives different accounts of its taste.”

And then Dandolo rolls onto his back, and he’s glorious and scarred and unashamed, he’s everything Melvin wants, and so much more. Half of Melvin’s sketchbook is filled with Dandolo.

The movement has made the blanket twist, slide even lower, drape diagonally over Dandolo’s legs, opening the hills and valleys of one hip — Melvin wants to touch him so badly his fingers are sparkling with it.

He lifts his gaze: Dandolo’s eyes are hooded, a sliver of green glinting in the half-darkness of the alcove. The cut of his jaw perfect, the chin — slightly asymmetrical, with the grooves of the tattoo; his brows, like two strokes of a brush. Thin lips, begging to be kissed. The straight nose. The worry lines on his forehead.

Shadow, Dandolo is so beautiful, and Melvin wants, wants, wants, wants, it’s like a bottomless pit. He should be ashamed of it — he was — but he can’t be anymore. Dandolo’s encouragement has eroded the shame.

“May I touch you?”

Dandolo moves both hands above his head — an invitation. Strokes the pillow. He has such an appreciation for things — for people’s labor.

“I believe I have already given you permission.” Dandolo’s tone is smooth, almost like the Prince’s — but not quite.

So Melvin bends to him again, a hand on the pillow to support his weight, but careful not to pull on the braids by accident. He kisses Dandolo’s mouth — Dandolo’s exhales, he tastes of camille tea, slightly sweet. Melvin wants to breathe him in. His stomach quivers at the heat of Dandolo’s body, Dandolo’s breaths on his cheek warm and soft when Melvin closes his lips on the jaw. Smooth. He licks experimentally: oranges and camille, again. Dandolo tilts his head back.

Melvin drags the flat of his tongue up the offered throat — the taste is thicker here, and more spicy. He brushes his lips over the dip by the shoulder, leads them to the mark. He latches onto it, and as before, he can’t name the taste — but the pillow rustles. He darts his eyes up: Dandolo’s fingers are digging into it. Melvin has only touched the mark with his fingers before, every time expecting them to come away wet. It even feels like oil, like perfectly smooth liquid _something_ poured onto Dandolo’s skin; it is sometimes hot, and sometimes cool to the touch.

He will remember that kissing it makes Dandolo tense up, his breath catch.

Melvin kisses over the clavicle. He has to move his hand lower, the sheets so soft. His charge sizzles, coils, prickling under his skin.

The planes of Dandolo’s chest move, faster. The soft hairs tickle Melvin’s lips. He can’t help smiling, kisses the beginning of a claw mark — the scar tissue is raised. He scrapes his teeth over the skin near the navel — and Dandolo bends his right knee and then it falls open. Dandolo tastes like salt, spice, like the darkness around them; the scent of leather and mole grease and oranges that follows Dandolo is now thicker.

Melvin pushes the blanket aside, licks his lips. He likes Dandolo’s cock, as he likes everything about Dandolo’s body. It’s half-hard already, lying on the thigh. Heavy. Melvin likes its weight, the slight curve when it’s hard, the taste, the silky feeling, the heat. The trimmed hairs at the base.

Melvin draws back, takes off his tunic, leaving the undershirt on, puts the tunic away. Dandolo squeezes his arm, eyes glimmering with promise. Melvin leans to him, into a kiss.

There is usually the urge to be fast, greedy, get everything he can — because it might end any moment, because it might never happen again. Dandolo slows him down, with words, hands, the tone of his voice. With his weight, pinning Melvin down, making it hard to breathe. With commands. Melvin is unlearning that rush, and instead he’s learning to savor things. He can have it, now, and he will have it after, again, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.

He doesn’t feel that fearful urgency now: Dandolo’s tongue presses into his mouth, and Melvin opens up to him. Then he kisses the triangles under Dandolo’s left eye. “I want you in my mouth.”

Dandolo’s hand, so large and tender, slides up his arm, callouses catching on the fabric of Melvin’s undershirt. “I’m all yours.”

He kisses Dandolo again, quick and hard, and slides down. He licks up the crease between the thigh and the hip. Dandolo squirms with a huff, a smile on his lips.

Melvin pushes Dandolo’s thighs open, wider, to accommodate his own broadness. The stab wound is under his hand, and he strokes it with a tip of his finger — the short black line. Then he licks over the sack and up Dandolo’s length.

He keeps his eyes open, to see, to memorize how Dandolo writhes, how he throws back his head and claws at the pillow when Melvin takes him into his mouth (hot and spicy and smooth). Dandolo is all movement, shifting like sands, like winds, heating up, rocks into Melvin’s mouth, and Melvin shudders, tries to ground himself by running his hand down Dandolo’s thigh. The flex of muscles doesn’t help his focus. He wants more, everything, _right now_. He tightens his lips. Dandolo’s fingers slide into his hair, and Dandolo arches off the bed, spilling into his mouth.

Melvin barely has any presence of mind left to control his charge.

He swallows the bitter release greedily; the fingers in his hair tighten, pull, and he slides up. Dandolo claims his mouth, demanding, and Melvin is uncoordinated, overwhelmed, he needs Dandolo, digs his fingers into the flesh of Dandolo’s arm and holds; worries, doubts, insecurities, fears — all are wiped away; Dandolo takes, and Melvin is taken, claimed, helpless, consumed. Here. Whole.

He cleans his own release off Dandolo’s hand with his tongue, and then they fall on the bed on their sides, face to face, and kiss, unhurried again, Melvin’s mind in a pleasant haze. He can’t keep his eyes open — he feels without analyzing, without frantically trying to memorize; it is not the last time. He runs both hands over Dandolo’s braids as Dandolo explores his mouth, and then down that broad back, feeling every muscle, every scar: history, from the first day to this moment. The air is hot, as though they are under a blanket. His charge is a pleasant buzz.

“Don’t you want to take the rest of your clothes off?” Dandolo murmurs, nuzzling under his jaw, a hot hand on Melvin’s waist. Fitting perfectly.

It makes Melvin’s toes curl, his stomach quiver: how can it be that they fit so well?

“This is a very good idea, Dandolo.”

Dandolo pulls back, and Melvin opens his eyes — and for a few moments something aches in his chest, something fragile and resilient, growing under the warm fondness of Dandolo’s gaze, the tender smile on his lips.

“Stay, Melvin.”

He knows this is not only about this moment. This is a conversation they are having nearly each day, in words and without them.

He pulls Dandolo down into another kiss, strokes down his spine. “I'm staying.”


End file.
